Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Nine Gubernatorial Appointees Would Dictate That Your Locality Must Open a Charter School

Perhaps the
most radical education proposal before the General Assembly this year is
Delegate Lingamfelter’s House Joint Resolution No. 526, which empowers the
Board of Education to “establish charter schools within the school divisions of
the Commonwealth.”

Currently,
this power rests with the local school boards.For example, the Richmond City School Board established the Patrick
Henry School of Science and Arts just three miles from the VEA Headquarters.

Lingamfelter’s
proposal dramatically shifts this decision away from a local school board which
is directly accountable to the people, by virtue of election or by appointment
by those who are elected, to a state level policy board appointed by the
governor.

Think of the
implications!Nine members of the
Virginia Board of Education, appointed by the Governor, could require your
locality to build, staff, and administer a charter school regardless of local
needs or desires.

The fiscal
implications are contrary to the lesson of the Pied Piper, “He who pays the
piper calls the tune.”Let’s look at the
example of Arlington.The state provides
only 12% of the funds, on a per-pupil basis, to run Arlington’s schools, but
under the Lingamfelter proposal, the state could require Arlington’s taxpayers
to foot 85% of the bill for establishing a charter school.

Research does support the override of the authority of the local school
board inherent in Lingamfelter’s bill.The findings of the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) found
that:

Some charters do better; the majority
do the same or worse. CREDO also moved beyond individual student performance
to examine the overall performance of charter schools across multiple subject
areas. They found that while some charter schools do better than the
traditional public schools that fed them, the majority do the same or worse.
Almost one-fifth of charters (17 percent) performed significantly better (at
the 95 percent confidence level) than the traditional public school.
However, an even larger group of charters (37 percent) performed significantly
worse in terms of reading and math. The remainder (46 percent) did not do
significantly better or worse. - See more at: http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/Main-Menu/Organizing-a-school/Charter-schools-Finding-out-the-facts-At-a-glance#sthash.V7UwaVGk.dpuf

The CREDO findings are consistent with
other mainstream research on this topic.

Further, there is significant
documentation of fraud and abuse within the charter school movement.“Charter School Vulnerabilities to Waste, Fraud And
Abuse,” authored by the Center for Popular Democracy and Integrity in
Education, echoes a warning from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of
the Inspector General. The report draws upon news reports, criminal complaints
and more to detail how, in just 15 of the 42 states that have charter schools,
charter operators have used school funds illegally to buy personal luxuries for
themselves, support their other businesses, and more.” – see more at:http://www.scribd.com/doc/221993993/Charter-School-Vulnerabilities-to-Waste-Fraud-Abuse

Delegate Lingamfelter
is a self-proclaimed fan of President Ronald Reagan; however, his proposal flies
in the face of one of Reagan’s core principles – devolution. Let’s leave the
charter granting authority closest to the people with local school boards.